The fact that "police" is not an adjective – rather, a noun or transitive verb – is one of many perplexing oddities about this perplexingly odd movie from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, who made the much-admired 12:08 East of Bucharest. This is a deadpan slice-of-life drama, showing a modern Romania torpidly depressed in spirit, unable to jettison the toxic bureaucratic pedantry of the old regime. Cristi (Dragos Bucur) plays a young cop whose job is to tail a teenage dope-smoker. Cristi has a crisis of conscience over Romania's petty, draconian laws and confronts his chief (Vlad Ivanov) who, in a bizarrely over-extended scene, forces him to read out the dictionary entry for "police". Flustered, Cristi turns to what appears to be a rare adjectival definition. This whole film is very "police": that is, not exciting or dramatic, but suspicious, cynical and exhausted. And Romania itself appears very "police": still drenched with the habits of a police state. This appears to be the point that Porumboiu is making, perhaps pedantically so, though the film is shot through with moments of black comedy.